In our everyday lives, we want to “fix” everything and most of the time very quickly…

Our intelligence is so advanced that we focus on “doing” instead of just “being” …

The stress of making things happen exactly in the timing we want makes us forget the beauty of life and appreciate our blessings…

We fix ourselves dreams that will probably never come true, not because they are not good for us but because better ones are around the corner waiting for us. And because we are so focused on the dreams we think are the best for us, our ego prevents us from acknowledging them. And we resist…The more we resist, the more we suffer…

The universe knows the quickest and the most harmonious way to our dreams. And it sends us exactly what we are ready for, at the exact time we need it in our lives…

“I got lost in a dream, asked “why” a million times, and even suffered thinking it was the only dream that would make me fully happy…But I eventually decided to let it go… And a much better dream found me at that very moment bringing other blessings to my life with it. The universe KNEW I was ready to welcome it to my life.

I looked back and felt that I had a great life. I just needed to enjoy better every moment of it without focusing on what might be the best for me. At that moment, I understood the real meaning of patience. It was not about just waiting but it was actually about being able to enjoy each moment of life while expecting.”

Life is sooo beautiful! Every moment, every breath is a blessing. Barcelona, 18.12.2017

I feel that I am one of these lucky souls to have gone through important life tests over the years. My conclusion from all the experiences is that you can have great knowledge about anything but without facing the real-life experiences, your wisdom will be limited…We have a great saying in Turkish: “One trouble is much better than a thousand of advice”. Although consciously we think we have learned our lessons and changed; sometimes it takes a bad experience to push us to fully understand and embrace them. In life, nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we must learn. Our suffering is more important when the experiences become a pattern and we have no option but to learn and change.

In my point of view, our souls come into this world to go through a series of tests and graduate from the school of life. The difference between school and life is that at school you learn first and then pass the test wheras life gives you the test first and the lesson afterwards. The experience is the hardest kind of teacher.

Happiness or sadness are both a part of our lives. It is perfectly normal to feel any feeling at any given time. The challenge is to accept life as it is and understand why we are here. Life is very fragile and we just need to focus on its teachings rather than our destination. And only when we understand our soul’s mission that we can become truly happy with ourselves…

On the final note, accept your life as it is, don’t force anything, believe in divine timing and be patient…You can not change your destination but you can change your reaction to the experiences life throws at you…

Life will throw you all the tests back and forth and you will sometimes feel like you have learned nothing and came back to the beginning. But in fact it is only a way to show you how much you have grown. It is the natural course of life to feel that way…And there will be lessons until the very last breath…

When we take life this way, it is much more simple to enjoy every moment, every life experience and see our blessings.

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https://yogawithnese.com/2017/08/06/balance/#respondSun, 06 Aug 2017 21:08:04 +0000http://yogawithnese.com/?p=2094Nature is all about balance… Universe has a divine timing to balance everything that is not in balance. Anything that seems unfair in life will eventually be corrected by the universe.

If you want something so badly but can’t get it whatever you do, maybe the right time has not come yet and there is a lesson to learn from it. By only wanting it more, you create an imbalance in your life in the form of resistance to universe’s divine time.

If you think about any relationship or situation where you give your all but get nothing in return, the universe will do everything either to remove it from your life ( sometimes until it gets balanced) or correct it by pushing you or the other to change.

“Life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen” A. Huffington

Life is all about finding the balance between what we can control and what we can not. So , if you are feeling stuck in your life like nothing is ever happening, maybe it is a message for you to work on finding your center and balance in the first place. While doing so, don’t think about the time, time is relative and works differently for each soul. Take your time, go slow if you need to…

Like I did in the video while practising eight angle pose. It is real fun to go slow , find your center and feel the magic of balance. While doing so, you will shake, almost fall but will eventually gain all the strength you may need…Enjoy the road to finding your balance in your soul’s very unique timing

They say you are as young as your spine…Having spinal pain could be a great stress factor in one’s life. It is true that most of us deal with back pain time to time as most of the time we live in a sitting position. Sitting ( except from on the ground) is not the best thing for the spine and the hips.

However, in some cases , one may have regular back pain, have been to the doctor, got scanned and nothing ever comes out as a physical reason to their recurring back pain. In that case, the reasons behind the back pain could be emotional.

Most of the time, chronic back pain or a pain over a long time is an alert from your body telling you to understand and control your emotions. I am certainly not an expert but over the years, I have learned to listen to my body and understand my emotions accordingly and I would like to share with you my conclusions.

You have chronic back pain with no apparent physical reason. If yes, please ask yourself the questions below :

Are you going through dramatic changes in your life and having difficulties to cope with these changes ? Root chakra represents the buttom of your spine and your lower back , it also represents who you are and your position in this universe. When we go through dramatic changes, we generally question our identity and in some cases , we feel lost . This is why our root chakra may be blocked and we may feel the reflection on our backs. During transition periods in life or when life is pushing us to change or become more mature, we can feel it in our back or bones.

Do you feel threatened and unsafe in your environment and feel the need to “protect” yourself ? (Do you feel lack of trust in your significant other, in your work environment ,feel unsafe in a country ?..etc) . Your back could be trying to protect you by making you staying at home , isolating you from the people and the environment that make you feel insecure or exposed to danger. In some cases , when you meet someone that you don’t trust subconsciously, you may have a sudden back pain.

Do you feel lack of stability in your life ? ( most probably due to the dramatic changes you are going through )

Do you lack money, comfort and are you feeling financially challenged ?

Do you feel “unloved” , isolated or lack of touch in your life ?

Do you not love your job or work place ?

Are you feeling alone to take on too much on your shoulders? ( at work and/or in your personal life)

Are you being challenged to face your past and confront some unfinished business from your past? (Your back generally represents your past.)

Do you want to change your life or a certain area in your life but feel blocked, constraint, stuck or paralyzed to take an action ?

If you answered yes to one or more questions above, your backpain is probably due to emotional reasons. So what should you do? My first advise for you would be to accept and love your back pain. I know it may sound strange to like some pain that makes your life a hell but believe me the more you will hate it , the more it will remind you of itself .

Now that you have accepted your pain , you will not let it win over your life. When you have pain, you may have tendancy to lie in your bed and have a rest. However, the more you isolate yourself from life by having a rest, the more powerful your pain will become. And each time, to “protect yourself”, you will isolate yourself more and consequently, you will have more pain. It is like a vicious circle. So what you should do is to continue to move and face life with its challenges all by accepting your pain. By moving, you will see in time that you will get out of the fear and the pain. Keep in mind that focusig too much on pain and putting yourself in protection mode, will only make the pain stronger. Also, when were in a negative state of mind, we feel physical pain stronger so try to focus your energy on the positive.

And my second advise would be to meditate to deal with these emotions and practice some yoga postures that will help you to restore the strength in your back and let the energies flow freely and balance your root chakra. Here below I have listed some of the most effective poses for back pain.

Happy New Year , Happy New You! May 2017 bring you the opportunities to discover the “New You” to start fresh and begin new chapter in your life…Sometimes in our lives , we feel that the “Karma has been released” and it is not going to repeat itself because we have learned our lessons and the “change” is there. However hard and complicated the change is , sometimes we need to leave the past behind to start fresh.

In a person’s lifetime , they say that we change or “are forced to change” every 6-7 years. Moreover, we reap what we sow every 7 years. So before something good comes, we may suffer or feel the pressure of life, like in the process of a birth which is painful. If we resist to change, life brings us distruptions to break the resistance. I believe that there is a “rebirth” age for most of us in a lifetime, the time when we finally resolve our subconscious mind and move on…

As for our world that is going through a tough time with a lot of violence, I only wish for peace in 2017. Our world is going through a cycle of violence and ego and this is why there is so much suffering today. This will eventually change and the peace will be restored but I think we still have time as humanity until we become more conscious and aware of the importance of the peace, love and the balance.

No Regrets in Life, just lessons learned

]]>https://yogawithnese.com/2017/01/08/happy-new-you/feed/0yogawithneseezgif_com-video-to-gif-3spread_your_wings_-xlarge10 Reasons Why You Know Yoga has Changed Your Life Foreverhttps://yogawithnese.com/2016/10/01/10-reasons-why-you-know-yoga-has-changed-your-life-forever/
https://yogawithnese.com/2016/10/01/10-reasons-why-you-know-yoga-has-changed-your-life-forever/#respondSat, 01 Oct 2016 20:46:42 +0000http://yogawithnese.com/?p=1638It is unavoidable…Soon after you are hooked on Yoga, you will realize that you are no longer the same person you used to be…You will not enjoy the same things in life like you used to because they will be replaced by more meaningful elements of life. The more you let the energies flow, the more connected you will become with the universe. And you will eventually find who you really are and your place in this life. In addition to feeling more relaxed and less stressed, your yoga practise will bring some important changes to your lifestyle. There is definitely more but I have listed some of them:

1.In the middle of the day, especially when you are stressed , you will dream of being on your mat

Thank God, I am here

2.You will start to sense the people and animals by their souls and not their appearances. You will become more sensitive to animals and their feelings. It is no coincidence that most people become vegetarian shortly after they start doing yoga ( like myself) !

I love you too Oscar !

3. You will appreciate more the time you spend in nature and with the loved ones. You will do everything to escape big cities, crowd, noise… Hearing simply the sound of a bird will make you feel lucky and cheerful.

4.You will find a good balance between the time to be “with you” and with others…Your alone time will be valuable to meditate and understand your conscience and you will not want to ruin it with disturbing people. If you were afraid to be alone before, you will learn to enjoy yourself doing things alone like travelling, discovering things…etc after yoga comes into your life.

5.You will be very sensitive to the quality of the air you are breathing. The pollution will be very disturbing and you will feel the effects of it more than everyone else.

6.You will learn to observe your behaviors and understand your ego. Consequently, you will understand others. I have to warn you though, you will not be able to spend one minute with the people whose lives are dominated by their ego.

No, you are not

7.Material ambitions and attachments will not mean much to you. And you will not want to spend too much time with the ones who have. All you hear when they talk about their status, money, job, marriage, their shopping …etc will sound “blah blah” to you. And you will do anything to live your life for meaningful and spiritual causes.

8.You will pay more attention to what goes into your body. You will treat it better and do your best to live clean and eat healthy. You will think twice when you want to eat a big junk food or other type of “stress relieving” stuff. And you will learn to understand your emotions and thoughts by feeling the tensions in your body.You will learn to go slow, live and act without rush. You will stop being violent with your body when you exercise.

9.You will learn to love yourself more and move on from the people who pull you down. So you may cut off people from your life because you are evolving and not them. And eventually you will attract the people like yourself into your life.

Well, actually it is ME

10.You will start to hate going out in bars and when you do, you will not be able to support alcohol, loudy music, drama of the others or people getting over confident once they start to drink. You will be looking at your watch yawning.

]]>https://yogawithnese.com/2016/10/01/10-reasons-why-you-know-yoga-has-changed-your-life-forever/feed/02948680537ebea815072d8d46a94098dyogawithneseon-the-matoscarr.gifnature.gifegowhyits-not-youGraduation day for a lifetime learnerhttps://yogawithnese.com/2016/07/08/graduation-day-for-a-lifetime-learner/
https://yogawithnese.com/2016/07/08/graduation-day-for-a-lifetime-learner/#respondFri, 08 Jul 2016 18:04:29 +0000http://yogawithnese.com/?p=1536Today is a significant day for me because I got my 300 hours Hatha yoga teacher training certificate! It is not an end but only the beginning of a lifetime learning…This month is also important for me as I have started teaching as a volunteer for an association in Paris. Yoga has helped me a lot for my personal evolution and If I could make an impact on others’ lives the same way- even if it is a very small one , I will be the happiest person in this world ! This was the reason in the first place for having taken this training and things can only get better now !

With my prof Eddy Siciliano, Director of Alliance Française de Yoga

I am very thankful for the support of my great Prof Eddy Siciliano, who is very knowledgable in Yoga, its philosophy and in many more topics . Not only he taught me Yoga but he also has guided me on my personal evolution during the past 9 months. If you live in Parisian region and are looking for a non-commercial, authentic yoga teacher training content, I would fully recommend Eddy’s training. His center, Alliance Française de Yoga, Centre Consenergie, YOGA LUNE ET SOLEIL is based in Choisy-le-Roi. Thank you for everything Eddy!

]]>https://yogawithnese.com/2016/07/08/graduation-day-for-a-lifetime-learner/feed/0yogawithneseIMG_1933Yoga and Egohttps://yogawithnese.com/2016/06/21/yoga-and-ego/
https://yogawithnese.com/2016/06/21/yoga-and-ego/#respondTue, 21 Jun 2016 09:31:11 +0000http://yogawithnese.com/?p=1493Today is the International Yoga Day. I will pray for the peace of the world today. The peace of the world depends on the peace of the individuals. If we give love to our kids, educate them to love and respect others regardless of the “differences”, the world will be a better place.

Sometimes, I can’t help to think that the world is wrong side up. The yin and yang are not in good balance that most of the time, the “black” is the new “white”. “I” has replaced “We”long ago. It is a ME, MYSELF and I age and when you resist to maintain your human values, you are considered a fool …It is no coincidence that being nice and considerate (basic qualities of a human being) is now considered a “flaw” to work on in every domain of life.

Rather than calling the non-human behavior the “false self “ or the “ego” , the system is pushing it like leadership, intelligence and all the great attributes to succeed in this life. It is creating a superficial competition to make people hate each other for what they don’t have to break the values even more. Do people with materialistic ambitions really live great lives? I am not so sure…

The ego is like a Facebook profile. When you view someone’s FB profile, do you ever see the photos of struggle of emptiness in there? No…You generally see the pictures of great looks, travels, parties, friends, happy marriages, families, great kids …etc. The ego is like that, it is not who you really are, it is what you want other people to think who you are. It prevents you from facing the real you and living your life authentically. It makes you live for the validation of the others. Do I judge? No. It is human nature, we all have been there because we all want to be loved and need a bit of the ego to protect ourselves in this world. But when we let our ego dominate our lives, the unhappiness is inevitable.

I will give you a tip on how you can better understand who you really are and your false self … This is a short test that always works…Have some quiet room and breath a few times to concentrate. When you are ready:

Name the first animal that comes to your mind. Why have you chosen that animal, what does it evoke in you? Note them somewhere.

After a few minutes, breathe again and concentrate.

Name another animal that comes to your mind. Why have you chosen that animal, what does it evoke in you? Note them somewhere.

After a few minutes, breathe again and concentrate.

Name another animal that comes to your mind. Why have you chosen that animal, what does it evoke in you? Note them somewhere.

Before I go to the results of the test, I want to talk about yoga and ego. When you let your ego dominate your life, you feel resentment, jealousy, anger, greed, lies, inferiority and eventually emptiness. We all have past hurts and those feelings are the results of them. And only when we accept and face them, there is a hope to overcome those feelings. These feelings limit you in life. A consistent yoga practice will accompany an individual to let energies flow freely to overcome the negativity coming from the ego. When the energies flow freely, the healing starts. The healing will eventually take us to the feelings of joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth.

Ego is like the voice of the spoilt little kid inside us that is never happy, always wanting more. When we learn to shut it down, we will become more free…

On the final note, only if you accept the change, yoga will help you. If not, don’t expect yoga to change you miraculously. Take off the masks, face the real you and work on listening to it.Stay with peace love and yoga…

Coming back to the result of the test:

1st animal you chose is how you want others to perceive you , (in other terms the false you, your ego, how you want to look to others)

Shiva symbolises consciousness, the masculine principle, whereas Shakti is the feminine principle, the activating power and energy. The left side is the Divine Mother, Pārvatī, the “feminine” energy, and the right side represents Shiva, the “masculine” consciousness.

Shakti, the “energy” represents the maternal element, abundance and creation. In this universe, feminin energy is here to create , nurture, give warmth and security.

Only when Shiva and Shakti get together , they can create action, movement. The energy without consciousness is “blind” and the consciousness without energy is a “sleeping energy.”

We all have Shiva and Shakti energies in us ,of the masculine and feminine principles. And those energies are stored in Root ( Muladhara) and Sacral (Swadhisthana) chakras. This is why when only we balance the energies in those chakras, we are able to awaken our creativity, pleasure and productivity to the fullest.

When we learn to love ourselves, we become more sensual and when we are more sensual, we are more passionate and there is room for pleasure in life…

On a personal note, since I have practiced yoga, I feel that sensual energy is flowing more freely as I have been able to get that powerful feminine creative energy out and use it to move towards my dreams . That energy is complemented by masculine consciousness giving my goals a meaningful form, direction.

I find those postures quiet useful to bring out the sensual energy :

Cat & Cow

Child Pose

Bridge / Wheel

Downward Facing Dog, Half Dog

Hero & Reclining Hero

Fish Pose

Scorpion

HandStand / HeadStand ( or other inversions)

When (self)love and sensuality co-exist, I believe there is passion for everything in life…